The US government is throwing up some roadblocks to prevent China from building its own “exascale” supercomputer.
On Thursday, the US Commerce Department imposed export controls on four supercomputing centers in China linked to developing the exascale systems, which will be five times more power than the US’s leading supercomputer.
According to the Biden administration, the emerging supercomputing tech poses a threat to US national security because it’ll end up aiding the Chinese military. (In 2019, the Trump administration also placed export controls on Chinese supercomputer maker Sugon.)
“Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many—perhaps almost all—modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement.
Indeed, the US itself has been using supercomputers for decades now to simulate and refine the country’s nuclear weaponry. The more powerful the machine, the more accurate it can simulate the explosion.
The Commerce Department’s export controls specifically target the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan, where the country has deployed a prototype exascale system. The US is also targeting the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, the home of China’s leading supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight. The system, pictured above, currently ranks as the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world.
The export controls mean US technology companies will need to secure a license from the Commerce Department in order to ship microchips and software to the Chinese supercomputing centers. But US companies should presume they’ll receive a denial.
In addition, the Commerce Department placed export controls on three Chinese companies it claims have been building supercomputing technology for the Chinese military. The Washington Post also notes that Taiwan, a major manufacturer of chips, plans on working with the US to monitor where the chip supplies go.
The US government expects to get its own exascale system online later this year with two supercomputers dubbed Aurora and Frontier. A third exascale machine, called El Capitan, will arrive in 2022.
